Month: July 2016

Eleven years ago, the Toronto Summer Music Festival kicked off in fine style. I remember being curious if cautious in my excitement, happy to see it unfolding, if unsure a classical music festival would catch on in Toronto; this isn’t exactly an environment that would support a Tanglewood, I reasoned, and come summertime, there was already so much to do in the city. It didn’t feel like classical music would get a foothold amidst all the festivals, street parties, and other summery cultural events. How wrong I was.

The TSMF has grown to become a very big, very popular part of Toronto’s cultural calendar. This year’s edition opens July 14th (this Thursday) and runs to August 7th, with a particular focus on the music of Great Britain. it sounds like a hoary old trope, but it’s true: the festival has something for everyone. You want fancy and big? Try the big-name concerts at Koerner Hall. You want smaller? Try Heliconian Hall. There’s also student performances, talks, and a generous helping of off-the-radar work too. And, there’s the Academy, perhaps the most vital part of the Festival, which offers a training and performance space for young musicians to work with established artists. And there’s a very casual, relaxed, entirely unpretentious approach to all of it.

That’s largely because of the work of one man, musician/academic Douglas McNabney, who’s been with the festival as Artistic Director since 2010. This year he’s stepping down, and will be replaced in the job by Toronto Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Jonathan Crow, with whom he’s worked in the past. Widely considered one of Canada’s finest chamber musicians, McNabney has performed all over the world, in every festival you can think of, and is currently Professor of Chamber Music at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University.

For someone so accomplished within the classical realm, you might think he’d come off snobbish, uppity — all the usual tropes associates with the culture. As you’ll hear from our chat, McNabney is none of those things; conversational, funny, and wickedly smart, he’s truly a Canadian cultural treasure who will be sorely missed by the Toronto music community. But, as he tells me, he’s a builder at heart.. so, onto a new (mystery) project, then! We also discuss the issue of diversity within the classical music world, and how the Festival, and the Festival Academy, is helping to bring about change.

I am an arts journalist and a longtime opera fan. I make it a personal mission to both examine the elements of opera production and clarify it for those who are not familiar with its finer points. Basically, you don’t have to know what coloratura or cabaletta is to have a great experience — and you shouldn’t have to. The widespread popularity of what I’d term “popera” is something I have mixed feelings about; on one hand, it introduces an artform to a wide audience in a fun, audience-friendly way that they recognize and appreciate, but, on the other, it waters down the art form in a way I don’t think is always necessarily helpful.

As I wrote on Twitter, I don’t consider what The Tenors do real opera. I realize this is snobbish and perhaps even offensive to some. I make no apologies. It’s singing loudly and with all the flash that might be perceived as opera, but. Generally, that’s okay; if it makes people more curious about the art form, and leads them to the opera house, or to iTunes to check out the work of various composers, great. Sometimes that curiosity bleeds into something else; sometimes it doesn’t, and that’s okay. If popera inspires the desire to learn more, provides some enjoyment, makes for a pleasant way for some to pass the time: great. I want to be a kind of human Pandora that says, “well, if you liked that, you’re going to love this…”

Russell Thomas and Anita Rachvelishvili in the Canadian Opera Company’s Carmen. Photo via

That very thing happened this past spring, when I brought friends to the Canadian Opera Company production of Carmen. With no more exposure to opera than a handful of clips of child stars and reality TV bits and bobs, the friends — of all ages — sat rapt for over two hours (with intermission). They loved the pageantry of the sets, the splendor of the staging, the lively conducting, and were bowled over, in particular, by the power of the voices. They were awestruck that no one was miced. They wanted to know more, and hear more.

So yes, sometimes popera leads to other things, and it’s nice when that happens. Introducing newcomers to opera busts up fusty old perceptions while kicking open the door to a powerful new artistic experience. If that powerful experience doesn’t happen, that’s fine too, but problems arise when a group like The Tenors make ignorant political statements. The perception of opera being an elitist, privileged, out-of-touch artform made by and for primarily white audiences is reinforced in the ugliest way imaginable. Forget Tamar Iveri and her horrific homophobic slurs; The Tenors have a much broader appeal, and, as a result, a huge audience. Their presence at the All-Star game was a symbol of their mainstream appeal; their horrifying political statement (which I am not going to write here, because it, and the mindset behind it, are offensive) sent out a message that reinforces an ugly, unfair stereotype.

Opera companies are working hard at wider representation — at both administrative and creative levels — and some are succeeding more than others. A mariachi opera was met with much success not long ago; a staging of Brokeback Mountain in Madrid was, equally, met with acclaim. Great black singers populate and have hugely shaped the history of opera — Arroyo, Price, Norman, Anderson: these are names we should all know, not just opera fans. Contemporary black opera singers have been vocal about struggles and it’s been good to see companies like The Met and the Canadian Opera Company hire more diverse casts. I want to see more of this, and am equally keen to see related programming expansions; it’s good for audiences, and frankly, it’s what the art demands. Fewer forms are more suited to examine issues of race, exclusion, class, and privilege than opera, which fuses music, theatre, and visual design to make powerful, searing statements that have contemporary relevance. The titular character in Mozart’s Don Giovanni is a member of the aristocracy who uses his male privilege in every way imaginable; equally vital issues of class and privilege are thoughtfully examined in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro as well as Verdi’s Rigoletto; Rossini’s Maometto II and Verdi’s Aida explore notions of interracial relationships, power, and prejudice. I would argue that even Carmen, perhaps the best-known opera to mainstream audiences, explores all of these things. The strong title character is constantly slurred (as well as sexually exoticized) for being a gypsy, a fact to which the obsessive Don Jose is both drawn and repelled.

So while the three members of The Tenors may claim, “it’s not us, it’s him!” I would respond, it’s not opera, it’s you. All of you. You have reinforced a notion of a deeply relevant, deeply beautiful art form that is hurtful, ignorant, and toxic. Please, just try to be good — a good singer, a good student, and most importantly, a good person: one who doesn’t blame, doesn’t shame, takes responsibility and educates themselves. It’s the least you can do for opera — and the utterly, absolute least you do for Black Lives Matter.